Mum of boy who died in stolen motorbike crash speaks out

Diane King

THE mum of a 14-year-old boy who died after being thrown from a stolen motorbike is urging cops to crack down on joyriders.

Brad Williamson suffered fatal head injuries when he crashed into a black Toyota Aygo on Silverknowes Road, Edinburgh, in June 2016. His passenger, also 14, suffered serious but non-life threatening injuries.

Brad Williamson died aged just 14.

Brad’s mum Katie Lothian is now calling on police to stop others losing their lives.

Her comments come just a week after a 10 year old boy was knocked down and badly hurt in a motorbike hit-and-run outside an Edinburgh police station near where Brad died.

Katie, 45, said: “Brad’s death broke our family. It gave me depression. I don’t want to go out the house. I’m scared of the traffic. I hear a car and I think: That’s a motorbike’.

“I move Brad’s photo about every day and I talk to him. I light a candle in the morning and in the evening. It helps me.

“Our whole family is just broken. It’s like all the happiness has been sucked out.”

Brad would have turned 16 this month, and around 50 family and friends gathered to release 200 balloons in his memory last Friday.

“I knew there was an issue with motorbikes around here but now the problem has just got bigger and bigger and bigger,” Katie said.

“You hear them all the time - constantly. It’s horrible. It’s got to stop. I’m scared to cross the road, because I’m registered blind anyway.

“It’s got worse, because the police can’t do anything.

“There needs to be something more that the police can do.

“The police have got bairns out there themselves. I feel sorry for the police. It’s not their fault. I think the council and the police and even the community need to get together and say, Right, this is it.’ “

Katie said the problem of youths stealing motorbikes and joyriding through Edinburgh had only got worse since Brad’s death.

And she insisted some of the boys Brad hung around with - who are still only 15 - are still out riding stolen bikes late into the night, having learnt nothing from his death.

She said it took less than a week for joyriders to be back out in the streets of Edinburgh’s Pilton and Muirhouse estates after Brad’s accident.

Brad was rushed to Edinburgh’s Sick Kids Hospital after his horrific crash, but the injuries to his brain were too severe and doctors were unable to save him.

Witnesses said the youngster was heard crying for his mum as he was treated at the scene - but by the time Katie arrived at the hospital he was already in a coma.

“From then, my whole insides fell because deep down I knew he was not going to pull through. I just knew,” she recalled.